


four times through the fire (four stories of four)

by kwritten



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Polyamory, Pre-Canon, References to Norse Religion & Lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:59:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2275812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helga Hufflepuff thinks back on her lives and the stories she has woven through time with the people she has loved.</p><p>(Some knowledge of the Volsunga and Brynhild/Gudrun a perk, but not required.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	four times through the fire (four stories of four)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [semele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/gifts).



_Wizards live much longer than they should, long after Muggles have sunk into dust, following generations before them, we are still here watching the planet spin on its axis. It is the curse we bear for the power we hold. Long after we should be at rest, there are those of us who linger._

Some mothers whisper fairy tales into their daughters’ ears, but for as long as she could remember, Helga had only heard the dire warnings of a sorceress.

Long after her mother was truly the dust she forewarned and Helga’s stories had become legends distorted beyond anything recognizable, she sat in her small room in the North Tower of Hogwarts, the past more real before her eyes than the present, and smiled bitterly at the warning. 

“My mother may have been crazy,” she tells her class of wide-eyed students the next morning, “But that didn’t mean she wasn’t powerful.”

 

 

Godric found Rowena in a cave, just like all the stories say. And he fell in love with her, just like all the legends will someday read. And she prophesied in the wake of their love-making, because that is what the story is and sometimes even those figures we want to be more powerful than their stories get caught up in the moment and cater to what the world needs. And he forgot her, “because he is a man after all,” she will later say to Helga. But that is a secret whisper between women, so let’s forget that for now.

 

Salazar wanted Rowena because that’s how these things always start. And he got her easily enough. He just had to walk through fire. Later, they will all sit around a fire in the open air and laugh at themselves for being so predictable.

_(Helga’s students race into her classroom twittering with mischievous laughter and she hides a smile behind her hand. Every year, a new class discovers the recipe for Pollyjuice Potion, and every year they believe themselves to be the first. They can’t know that she remembers the day it was created, that she stood in the room with her dearest Salazar and watched him work fiercely over a steaming pot as she begged him to stop. Thirteen year old innocents wearing each other’s robes make her proud of him, when in the moment all she wanted was for him to stop.)_

 

And Helga was married to Godric, because that’s what her mother wanted and her mother always got what she wanted. 

 

And so began a story of pining, just like in all the old stories. 

 

Helga remembers those times, in Rowena’s room, pretending not to be aware of the pained glances her husband and her sister shared – oh yes, they were sisters. Sisters in every possible way. They hated each other as only sisters could. Shared rooms and dreams and wardrobes and spinning wheels and baths. Shared hopes and love in the way only sisters truly can. Helga remembers the hours, like sand slipping too quickly through an hourglass, she picks them up one by one and holds them in the palm of her hand, longing for the simplicity of two women sitting side-by-side with their needlework.

 

The first time Salazar found her in a dark hallway and dragged her into a deserted room, clapping a hand over her mouth and forcing himself into her, she could have – with some degree of honesty – claimed that she had no idea what possessed him to do such a surprising and violent thing. (That she went willingly, that she held out her hand to stop him as he passed, that her eyes spoke of lust and longing and promise, that she bit his hand and came with the taste of his blood in her mouth, these were things that were never spoken aloud.) 

The second time that she was dragged unceremoniously into a dank closet, she did nothing to hide her pleasure – and hoped that her cries reached Rowena’s ears far more than her husband’s.

 

That winter, she gave birth to a boy with hair as dark as Salazar’s and Rowena gave birth to a girl with Godric’s crystal blue eyes.

 

In the stories, they say that Rowena – a girl of another name found in a cave and brought into a marriage by trickery – wasted away through grief and torment. 

That was only their first story.

 

 

Their second story begins with Rowena and Helga on horseback, their children young and proud and strong with ponies of their own at their side, racing into the North without a glance back at the husbands they so desperately wanted to love.

 

Their second story is Helga’s favorite.

It is the one that no one knows.

 

Of two women in the woods with their two children – one fair and one dark, just like their mothers – living a simple Muggle life. It is easy to hide from warriors if you pretend not to be one. 

_(Helga can still be found sometimes – in her nightdress – with a sword in hand, balancing through the armory in the dead of the night. She laughs when the students find her – though more often than not it is the house elves who bring her warm milk and coax her back to bed – and tells brilliant stories over hot cocoa of her many daring adventures on the battlefield. All of which took place long after her son had gone on to write his own story of love and betrayal and war. “In those days,” she says with a calm smile, “War was all there was, we just called each battle by a different name.”)_

Their second story has no rhymes or records, there is no one searching for it, no one wanting to write it down. Two women in the woods with their children, playing house, and being in love in that quiet way that epic figures are never quite able to accomplish.

 

 

Their third story gets everything mostly right. Their names are unchanged – that’s Wizard records to blame, really; Helga prefers the stories where she is no longer recognizable because then she can walk away from them – and there’s a monument of brick and mortar to prove it. 

A school, a peace treaty, a reunion of sorts. (A war first, because things like this always begin with war and bloodshed. And maybe a child or two is lost along the way – but the stories say this was the end of losing children and perhaps we trust stories so that we don’t have to remember what we know.)

Four friends who banded together to create a school for young wizards. (Fresh-faced and young, or very tired and old, or battle-worn and weary, it does not matter. They are there as four once again and they are as much the epic now as they were in their beginnings.)

That’s the story. 

 

It doesn’t tell of the heartache that they had all already shared. Says nothing of the heartache the school would bring. Says nothing of the way Salazar’s eyes would linger on their fingers interlaced or of Godric’s vain attempts not to stare when they walked arm in arm together by the lake. Says nothing of nights hidden in the forest under the stars all four of them, pretending not to like it best this way, drawing lines of want and propriety in the morning.

Helga thinks all their pain is caused by this desperate need for lines to be drawn in the sand. She thinks of the scar her teeth left on Salazar’s palm and thinks that’s the only line she needs to ever draw – pain and blood and lust and longing, right there on the flesh of her lover. That is the kind of line she can believe in. She thinks of the pale silver lines on Rowena’s hips that match her own, that speak of pain and blood and childbirth and growing pains and bright-eyed bundles of promise making their way in the world. That is the kind of line she can put faith in. She thinks of the scar above Godric’s eye from when they were children and she dared him to climb to the tallest branch of the tree in her father’s orchard and the way she nursed him back to health after he fell. That is the kind of line she can draw strength from. She has her lines – they pull her to them all with the strength of a thousand swords.

Lines that pull them away from her with equal strength.

 

 

_(She hears the whispers of the children in the corridors, speculating of the discord between Godric and Salazar and she lingers in the shadows their stories cast over the bricks they four lay down with their own hands. Love. Loss. Anger. Rebellion. Their imaginative flights of fancy give her strength, make her smile into her hands and keep walking with her head held high.)_

 

 _What is the end?_ That’s what they always ask, crowded around on their knees in supplication to the mother of their house and their world and their school. _What is the end of the story?_

 

 

 _My darlings,_ she will say. _I do not know the ending, for I am part of it. And I am still here._

 

 

The life of a wizard is born in circles, one lifetime mirroring and overlapping with the other forever into time. _We live too long,_ her mother warned. 

 

Helga smiles as she bursts into flames and walks out the other side.

_Mother, dear. How could I not find another way, with you forever in my ear? Didn’t you learn when I was a girl and stole my husband’s bride away? I will not allow us to be contained as you once promised._

 

 

 _What is the end?_ the halls of Hogwarts will forever lament, desperate for the secrets of a story long since over.

 

In their fourth story, Helga smiles knowingly, they will be as tragic and romantic as they ever have been. 

Maybe you have already read it.


End file.
